How to Improve Grammar

Grammar enables people to understand one another's sophisticated ideas.

Language is the way we communicate ideas to others and formulate them for ourselves. It has a consistent structure, called grammar, that enables people to understand one another by conforming their speech and writing to the set of rules laid out by grammar. As such, sound grammatical knowledge is one of the core elements of literacy. If your grammar is weak, you cannot consider yourself a highly literate person. By improving it, you improve yourself.

Instructions

1. • 1
     Read books. Reading another person's good writing is one of the most effective ways for you to develop your own skills. Published books are almost always professionally copy-edited, and will expose you to a wide variety of syntactical and grammatical formulations.
   • 2
     Study sentence diagramming and practice it regularly. Sentence diagrams help you visualize the logical grammatical structure of a sentence, helping you to master the parts of speech and develop your syntax. You can check out a book on sentence diagramming at your local library.
   • 3
     Keep a dictionary handy, always. Vocabulary is not a part of grammar, but, when you don't know what a word means, a sentence is much more likely to confuse you. When that happens, you won't be able to absorb its grammatical logic. So, if you read or hear a word or phrase you don't understand, look it up in the dictionary. If you're not sure on the spelling of something, look it up in the dictionary.
   • 4
     Study verbals. A verbal is a verb which has been turned into another part of speech, like a noun or adjective. Verbals are relatively simple to learn, but are the source of vast complexity in the English language---meaning that if you learn them your grammatical comprehension will increase considerably.
   • 5
     Study verb tenses and conjugations. In English, a verb can be written many different ways to indicate when an action occurs and who or what causes it. Writing verbs correctly is important for clear, intelligent communication.
   
   
   
   • 6
     Study prepositions. Many longer sentences contain one or more elaborate prepositional phrases, and these are a big source of complexity in English. In particular, be sure to practice diagramming prepositional phrases, to see just how they function grammatically.
   • 7
     Incorporate grammar practice into your everyday life by speaking and writing with good grammar more often.